Lottery Quotes

Some material things make my life more enjoyable; many, however, would not. I like having an expensive private plane, but owning a half-dozen homes would be a burden. Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends. My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest. Both my children and I won what I call the ovarian lottery. (For starters, the odds against my 1930 birth taking place in the U.S. were at least 30 to 1. My being male and white also removed huge obstacles that a majority of Americans then faced.) My luck was accentuated by my living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results, though overall it serves our country well. Ive worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fates distribution of long straws is wildly capricious. The reaction of my family and me to our extraordinary good fortune is not guilt, but rather gratitude. Were we to use more than 1% of my claim checks on ourselves, neither our happiness nor our well-being would be enhanced. In contrast, that remaining 99% can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others. That reality sets an obvious course for me and my family: Keep all we can conceivably need and distribute the rest to society, for its needs. My pledge starts us down that course.

Warren Edward Buffett

Lottery tickets are a surtax on desperation.

Doug Coupland

May this plain statement of facts prevail on the friends of the rising generation to interpose for their welfare; that the education of children may no longer be to parent and master a lottery, in which the prizes bear no proportion to the enormous number of blanks.

Joseph Lancaster

Worries are the most stubborn habits in the world. Even after a poor man has won a huge lottery prize, he will still for months wake up in the night with a start, worrying about food and rent.

Vicki Baum

There are no politics in war. Politics is the luxury of the safe-at-home. War is a lottery of survival.

John Cory

Marriage was a lottery, and you drew your lot in late adolescence or early adulthood at a point of maximum idiocy and confusion.

Lois McMaster Bujold

War is a lottery in which nations ought to risk nothing but small amounts.

Napoleon Bonaparte

I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.

Fran Lebowitz

Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery.

Bill Watterson

Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women their happiness.

Madame de Rieux

He who trusts all things to chance, makes a lottery of his life

Proverb

I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not.

Fran Lebowitz

Camilla lights a candle, starts to turn around, 'Charles, what is it, baby? You seem kinda down.' He said, it don't seem fair, and it just ain't much fun, When your mama's got two birthdays, And you only got one! You got that Royal Birthday blues, That lack-of-an-official-birthday-blues, Phillip takes a drink o' wine, And tells it like it was, 'This is what you have to do my boy, and here's the thing, because.... One day you're gonna rule the world, but you're gonna have to hang around... 'Coz you're mama's not goin' anywhere, She ain't givin' up that crown!' You got that Royal birthday blues, They gonna creep up on you just like that. Yeah, you really been paying your royal due, Well, in and out and up and down, That's the way the money goes, and whether the pound will finally stop... Nobody really knows! One thing that you don't want, that what really ain't that funny... Is when your...face even ain't on the money! We got badgers and lizards and hedgehogs and squirrels and even Darwin too, They've even got one elegant Scottish Hebrew, But the one thing that ain't on the money, that definitely ain't on the money.... Isn't it strange that you ain't even on the change, It doesn't make sense that your not on the pence, I never found you on the pound! Not even on a lottery ticket or a subway token or anything around there, or anything around there, now. There ain't nothin' on the money, you ain't definitely on the money, The one thing that ain't on the money....is YOU!!

Bill Bailey

Lifeis an enormous lottery: the prizes are few, the failures innumerable. Out of the sighs of one generation are kneaded the hopes of the next. That's life.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
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